Francis Dolarhyde
Francis Dolarhyde, known to the police department and the public as "the Tooth Fairy", due to his unsightly habit of biting the skin of his victims, was a mass murderer who would massacre entire families during the full moon. He has a deadly second personality he calls "The Great Red Dragon," which was formed due to his brushes of abuse by his family members as a child. His most recognized feature was a large tattoo that runs along his back in the shape of the Red Dragon. He was the main antagonist of Red Dragon. Personality As Mr. D When not in his Great Red Dragon persona, Francis goes by the nickname of "Mr. D." In this persona, he is a timid, soft-spoken, and restrained man who exhibits a somewhat angry demeanor. As The Great Red Dragon As a result of the abuse he suffered at a very young age, Francis gained a second personality he labled "The Great Red Dragon," named after the William Blake painting "The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed in Sun." In this persona, he is a cruel, heartless person who would brutally slaughter entire families (or, "changing" entire families, as he believes he is doing so), in the belief that each kill he commits would draw him closer to becoming the Red Dragon. In the novels Pre-Red Dragon Before the events of Red Dragon, Francis was abandoned by his mother at a very young age and was taken in by an orphanage until the age of five, when his grandmother adopted him. However, his grandmother was extremely abusive toward him, and his anger grew so great that he tortured animals as a means of venting it. Soon, his grandmother suffered from dementia, and Francis was then taken in by his biological mother and her family, but, they, too, abused him violently. The abuses he endured by the people who took him in caused him to develop a second personality; a deadly and ruthless one. He was returned to the orphanage after hanging his stepsister's cat, and, after being caught breaking into a house as a young adult, enlisted himself in the army. Soon, Francis, while on tour for several countries, had cosmetic surgery done to seal his cleft palate shut and later was hired to be the production chief of the home movies division of Gateway Corporation. The home movies the customers (and would-be victims) sent to Francis were crucial in his killing spree, as they showed footage of every inch of the house the family resided in, which allowed Francis to know how to work his way around. Later, Francis came across the William Blake painting, "The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed in the Sun." The painting gave voice to Francis' other half, and so, he named his other personality "The Great Red Dragon." Red Dragon Francis then started a killing spree, killing the Jacobi family, who resided in Alabama, and the Leeds family, who resided in Georgia. His tendency to bite the flesh of his victims with a set of dentures which contained crooked and deformed teeth (modeled after his grandmother's) earned him the name "the Tooth Fairy" among the media. He also had molested one of the corpses and often sexually gratified himself to the films he made while killing his victims. In order to capture Francis, agent Will Graham, who reluctantly stepped out of retirement in order to help capture him, sought help from a criminal he imprisoned; the intellectual Hannibal Lecter, in the hopes that the psychotic, cannibalistic man could give some insight into the "Tooth Fairy's" pathology. Meanwhile, unknown to Will, Lecter contacted Francis through telephone and provided him with Will's home address as a means of revenge for his imprisonment at Graham's hands. Unfortunately for Dolarhyde, Will's boss, Jack Crawford, intercepted the message and managed to relocate Will's family just in time. Francis was an avid reader of a tabloid newspaper called the National Tattler, which contains stories about Lecter's arrest and trial, Graham, and about the murders he himself commited; he often took clippings from the newspapers and stored them away. In an attempt to lure him out of hiding, Graham decided to give the reporter of the paper, Freddy Lounds, a characterization of the Tooth Fairy; he describes the killer as an impotent homosexual. After the characterization had been published through the Tattler, Francis abducted Lounds and glued him to an old wheelchair. Then, he forced him to view all the sadistic things that Francis had done to his victims through pictures, bit off his lips, and set him ablaze, depositing him at his newspaper offices. Lounds eventually died, but not before blaming Will for the gruesome act that befell him. In the meantime, Francis developed a romantic relationship with a blind co-worker named Reba McClane. This made his normal side feel at ease, but his other, psychotic half had been infuriated by this and wanted to kill her with all its might. In an attempt to prevent his other half from killing her, he went to the Brooklyn museum and actually consumed the William Blake painting, believing that once he does so, his Dragon half would be silenced. However, he discovered that the police were onto him and returned home to see Reba for one final time. However, he spotted her with another co-worker named Ralph Mandy. Believing her to be unfaithful, Francis angrily shot Ralph in the head and abducted Reba. At his house, Reba awakened. In great anger of her supposed "betrayal," Francis doused his house on fire and intended to kill her and then himself, but found himself unable to end her life. He then seemingly shot himself, and Reba managed to escape the burning house with the help of the arriving police squadron. However, Francis never shot himself; the body found at the crime scene actually belonged to a gas station attendant Francis had killed earlier. After Will and his family returned to their original home, Francis attacked them and stabbed Will in the face, horribly disfiguring him. After a very grueling battle for survival, Francis is finished off by Will's wife, Molly, after she shot him in the face. In Film Manhunter (1986 film) In the 1986 film Manhunter, Francis' last name was spelled as "Dollarhyde," and he was portrayed by Tom Noonan. Unlike his novel and 2002 film counterparts, his Red Dragon tattoo was stretched from his chest to his back, however, the tattoo was removed from the final version of the film, partly due to the fact that it was distracting and that it was similar to the Yakuza tattoos. In this version, he was killed by Will, not by his wife, Molly. Red Dragon (2002 film) In the 2002 film Red Dragon, Francis was portrayed by Ralph Fiennes. His backstory was heavily omitted in this adaptation; the abuse he endured at the hands of his adopted family was removed. He was killed by Molly, Will's wife, but did not stab Will in the face. In Television Hannibal Richard Armitage was cast as Dolarhyde and is set to appear in six episodes of the show's third season. Category:Antagonists Category:Red Dragon Category:Characters Category:Main Category:Manhunter